This story, originally published by MindSite News, is the latest installment of Fateful Encounters, an ongoing investigative collaboration between MindSite News, the Medill Investigative Lab-Chicago at Northwestern University and other media outlets exploring police response to mental health crises. This work is generously supported by the Sozosei Foundation.
On a fateful morning in April 2021, Portland police responded to a 911 call about a man holding a gun in Lents Park, a suburban park where unhoused people often sleep in tent encampments or in the parking lot. Within four minutes, Robert Delgado was dead, fatally shot with an AR-15 by an officer trained to respond to mental health calls.
Witnesses agree that Delgado was agitated and pacing erratically back and forth, drawing the gun and doing James Bond-type moves, but accounts of the killing differ. A witness said Delgado was unarmed and had his hands up as police approached. Two officers who fired at him – one with an AR-15 and the other with a less-than-lethal projectile launcher – said he pointed what looked like a handgun at them…